ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF MAINSTREAMING IN THE USA: INTERPROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

When the United States takes a step forward, it is a firm step. The word "mainstreaming" owes its prominence in education today to the Public Law requiring it, for it has placed the undertaking to which this term refers so firmly on the map that there can be no evading its many and costly obligations. Reynolds explores the kinds of obligation that are the most difficult to engage and yet the most critical for success - those changes of role (and by implication, of assumptions of status) between the professionals who together must evolve and monitor each child's "individualized education program." There are acute and unfamiliar problems of process here that the several kinds of professional involved must understand and resolve. He offers three "structures" helpful to carrying on complex communications in ways which will serve the educational purposes that the Law has stipulated.